The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.
By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. Conservatives of this disposition can be dull, but they know how to nurture and run institutions....Over the past 30 years, or at least since Rush Limbaugh came on the scene, the Republican rhetorical tone has grown ever more bombastic, hyperbolic and imbalanced....Politics is the process of making decisions amid diverse opinions. It involves conversation, calm deliberation, self-discipline, the capacity to listen to other points of view and balance valid but competing ideas and interests.

But this new Republican faction regards the messy business of politics as soiled and impure. Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal.

The reasons are easy to identify, the consequences extremely difficult to assess, the solutions complicated and uncertain.

Europe is politically stable and prosperous; Africa and the Middle East are not. Europe’s population is steady or declining; Africa and the Middle East have exploding numbers. Europe’s geography is not seriously affected by climate change; parts of Africa and the Middle East, already dry, are getting drier and therefore less fertile.

War is all but unimaginable in Europe; military conflict is a fact of life in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Human rights are respected throughout Europe (with a few exceptions); human rights are systematically abused by authoritarian and theocratic regimes in some African and many Middle Eastern countries. Women have made startling advances in almost every walk of European life; women are still discriminated against in too many parts of Africa and the Middle East.

These pressures pushing or enticing large numbers of people toward Europe will not disappear. If anything, they will intensify as the years go on, because climate change, demographic pressures, fierce intrareligious rivalries, the lack of respect for pluralism and a host of other entrenched realities will not bend to moral entreaties or military interventions from Western countries.

Being Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, a vital job in our parliamentary democracy. Answering that person's questions is key!!!

The symptoms are chronic and the prognosis bleak, because this is a top-down problem. Successive prime ministers have hoarded power in their office and reduced cabinet members and government MPs to carbon-based rubber stamps. This is not a development that is specific to Mr. Harper – Jean Chrétien was no great decentralizer of prime ministerial power either – but Mr. Harper has taken it further than his predecessors. He is at risk of becoming more well known for the contempt of Parliament that has flourished under him than he is for his accomplishments as one of the country’s longest-serving prime ministers.

Sep. 07 2013 | The Globe and Mail | Sandra Martin.
Her new book, The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, will be out this fall – in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the war next August.

Why are we still haunted by the First World War?

Because we still don’t know what to make of it. We’re still horrified by the loss, by the sense that it may have all been a mistake, by the sheer waste, and by what happened afterward. Nothing much was settled, it helped to brutalize European society, to breed ideologies like fascism and Bolshevism, to prepare the way for the horrors that came in the 1920s and 1930s and the Second World War. It’s also a war that created the modern world. It had its greatest impact on Europe, of course, but it shaped Canada and Australia, helped to speed the rise of the United States to superpower status, and redrew the map of much of the world. It was a watershed that remains one of the greatest historical puzzles.

Addressing "root causes" will not stop people like that. Even if Israel pulled out of the West Bank tomorrow, Islamic terrorist groups would keep trying to kill Israelis. To them, it is not the Israeli occupation that rankles. It is the very existence of Israel It is pure hatred, more than grievance. that drives them.

Yet the "root causes" notion lives on. We have seen it twice this week on these very pages. The day after Tuesday's attack. University of Toronto scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon argued that the root cause of terrorism was the growing gap between rich countries and poor ones.

"These differences breed envy and frustration and, ultimately, anger." he wrote. "The problem will never go away if we don't address the underlying disparities that help motivate such violence."

Then, in yesterday's paper, columnist Rick Salutin said that the key to defusing support for terrorism was "eliminating the worst cases of wretchedness that sustain it." His suggestion: End Western sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq and get Israel to pull out of the West Bank.

No doubt both writers abhor what happened this week as much as everyone else. But by making excuses for terrorism, even qualified excuses, they give the perpetrators what they crave most: legitimacy. Worse, they acquit them of responsibility for their own actions.
If terrorism springs from their frustration over unanswered grievances. then it is not really their fault. It is merely a disease and they are simply the carriers, "rather in the way that innocent animals might be the carriers of rabies" (as the conservative U.S. author Midge Decter once put it).

That not only gives comfort to the terrorists, it hurts the effort to fight them. If terrorists are not morally responsible for their own actions, then it frees the rest of us from the burden of taking them on.

"The towers of the World Trade Center had barely settled into the ground before Canadian critics began suggesting that the Americans may have brought this disaster on themselves. In letters to the editor, opinion columns and talk shows, these critics have leaped to explain why U.S. foreign policy laid the ground for last week's attacks. "..."Anti-American sentiment is hardly new in Canada. There has always been a camp that considers the United States to be the root of all evil. But to see it emerge now, when Americans are still in the depths of their grief, is disturbing. Have these people no sense of decency? What sort of person kicks a neighbour when he is down? How would we feel if Americans began lecturing us on the error of our ways so soon after a national tragedy? "..."Of course, the anti-Americans are always careful to hide their barbs in a cloak of sympathy. Terrorism, they intone, is wrong, and the attacks on New York and Washington were a tragedy. But remember, they go on, the Americans have done some nasty things too. What about My Lai and other U.S. atrocities in the Vietnam war? What about the U.S. bombing of Cambodia? What about CIA support for the Pinochet regime in Chile?

Funny, but that is just what the terrorists say. It is a staple of militant rhetoric to argue that the United States is the real terrorist on the world stage. In the terrorist view, the United States is so evil, so destructive, that any attack on Americans is justified -- even an attack that kills thousands of innocent civilians.

This should go without saying, but there is no parallel -- no moral equivalence -- between what the terrorists did last week and what the United States may have done in the past. Whatever mistakes, and even crimes, that Washington may have committed in its role as a global superpower, these do not begin to explain, much less excuse, what was done last week. Even a schoolboy knows that two wrongs don't make a right, and these wrongs were of entirely different orders. Yet the anti-Americans drone on, telling us that we must see Sept. 11 "in context" -- the context of U.S. hegemony, U.S. imperialism, U.S.-led globalization. "

Product recalls are a serious problem for consumer products companies. A conservative estimate indicates each recall costs more than $8 million on average to the company in reimbursement to consumers, recall execution costs and compensatory damages from litigation. This translates into a cost of more than $6 billion a year to the consumer products industry. The estimate does not include lost sales due to reduced marketplace credibility and lost market share. Companies can sharply reduce product safety risk and the number of recalls by implementing best practices to improve product safety and quality. Consumer products companies are under intense pressure to commercialize new products as quickly as possible. This pressure to get products out quickly means safety checks and balances are often overlooked. Consumer products companies can adopt both preventive and proactive practices to sharply reduce product safety risk and resultant costs. Some companies apply these practices and manage safety issues well enough to use their safety record and high quality as a competitive advantage. These companies have institutionalized best practices and achieved impressive results...If rushing a product to market before it is ready results in a costly product recall, however, then the decrease in time to market comes at the expense of time to profitability-a more meaningful measure....In fact, our root cause analysis of product recalls found more than 75% can be traced back to shortcomings in product development.

America defends its interests, sometimes skilfully, sometimes clumsily, just as other countries do. Since power, like nature, abhors a vacuum, it steps into places where disorder reigns. On the whole, it should do so more, not less, often. Of all the great powers in history, it is probably the least territorial, the most idealistic. Muslims in particular should note that the armed interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, both led by America, were attacks on Christian regimes in support of Muslim victims. In neither did the United States stand to make any material gain; in neither were its vital interests, conventionally defined, at stake. Those who criticise America's leadership of the world's capitalist system—a far from perfect affair—should remember that it has brought more wealth and better living standards to more people than any other in history. And those who regret America's triumph in the cold war should stop to think how the world would look if the Soviet Union had won. America's policies may have earned it enemies. But in truth, it is difficult to find plausible explanations for the virulence of last week's attacks, except in the envy, hatred and moral confusion of those who plotted and perpetrated them.

1. Anticipate. Hone your “peripheral vision.” Reduce vulnerabilities to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. ... Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better
2. Think Critically. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill, you must force yourself to reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes. Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions.
3. Interpret. Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, you are tempted to reach for a fast (potentially wrongheaded) solution. A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:Seek patterns in multiple sources of data; Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously.
4. Decide. Many leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” Develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to: Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter, Balance speed, rigor, quality, and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers. Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views
5. Align. Consensus is rare. Foster open dialogue, build trust, and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. To pull that off, you need to: Understand what drives other people's agendas, including what remains hidden. Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it's uncomfortable
Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support
6. Learn.

As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by. You have to do what you can to keep it coming.
Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
Shift course quickly if you realize you're off track
Celebrate both successes and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight
Do you have what it takes?

* What going on? What ails you? What else could it be?
* Could two things be going on at once?" and "Are there any findings (from the physical exam, blood tests, x rays, etc.) that don't add up?"
* Is that the root problem or is that a symptom?

* Probabilistic reasoning is especially important in medical decision-making. Imagine, for example, your doctor tells you that you need to take a cholesterol-lowering drug. Most people would likely assent based on their physician’s recommendation, he says. But if you were to weigh the odds of that drug having a positive effect against the odds of experiencing side effects, you might find it wiser to decide otherwise.

“What I advocate is a more active role in medical care where you would say to the doctor, ‘Well, what are the chances that I’ll benefit from it? How many people take this medication with no benefit?’” Levitin says. Although doctors tend to be trained to think in terms of diagnosing and treating illnesses, they are not typically trained to think probabilistically, he adds. This becomes problematic when faced with the latest treatment options with questionable odds of a cure. “The way medical care is going in this country and in other countries, I think we need to become more proactive about knowing which questions to ask and working through the answers.”

Questions when you're concerned that you're facing a misdiagnosis (cbc Dr. Danielle Martin)
* OK....then in your opinion, what should be the normal progression of the diseases from this point onwards?
* What signs should we look for that tell us that it's time to return to the emergency room?
* Q: when should we come back.....if the flu how should case typically progress ? What are the signs that something is wrong and you should come back to the emergency room?
* what is the most likely course, when should we come back if there is a deviation?
*

Mar 11 2011 | The Atlantic | Ta-Nehisi Coates. "Given that
Detroit story is now up, I wanted to give another shout out to two books
which really helped me find my way. The first is Thomas Sugrue's The
Origins Of The Urban Crisis. If you have any interest in the history of
cities, this book is required reading....I'd also toss in Robert Conot's
problematic American Odyssey. It's the best overall history of Detroit
I've read.

July 18, 2010 | New York Times | by ROSS DOUTHAT. "...what
was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the
conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most
disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the
working-class.......But cultural biases seem to be at work as well.
Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most
extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite
school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations
like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America
actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the
gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who
seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”

OCTOBER 8, 2008 | Wall Street Journal | Op-ed
Who really caused the credit crisis? There is little question that it
resulted, at least in part, from a push to relax lending standards so as
to make it easier for poor and minority borrowers to get mortgages.
This in turn created incentives for banks to make bad loans, many of
which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac acquired.

May 5, 2008 | Report on Business pg. B10 | by George Stalk.
George's column in the G&M on the benefit of asking "why" five times
to increase one's chances of being able to work backwards to
identifying a problem's root cause.